The present disclosure is directed to circuits in general and, in particular, to current driver circuits for junction devices.
In electrical circuits, the gates of junction devices, such as JFETs or bipolar junction transistors (BJTs), may need to be driven with an increased initial current to cause the junction device to switch quickly. This may be due to various capacitances within the junction device that must be charged before the device will switch. The greater the current supplied to the gate of the junction device, the faster the device's capacitances may be charged, thereby allowing the junction device to switch more quickly than a device having lower current supplied thereto.
While delivering an increased current to the device may allow the junction to switch relatively quickly, such increased current delivery also generally increases the power consumption of the driver circuit. For example, to deliver an increased current to allow a junction to switch relatively quickly, a DC to DC converter may be used. However, delivering a high current from a high voltage source may result in a relatively large amount of power dissipation by the circuit, which would also result in a significant amount of heat generation. Such high power dissipation may result in the driver circuit needing a larger area and may prevent the driver circuit from being mounted in a single integrated circuit package.